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Literary references
Peter Abernathy quotes Shakespeare following an update to 10% of the active hosts. He whispers, "These violent delights have violent ends" to his daughter Dolores (from Romeo and Juliet) and later quotes Shakespeare to Dr. Robert Ford in the Westworld Mesa Hub.The Original Some Westworld employees postulate that the addition of reveries in the recent update may have caused Peter Abernathy to have access to his previous build (in the role of a professor who like to quote Shakespeare). Theresa Cullen concludes that Peter's ability to 'see' the contents of the Guest Photograph, and his obsessive behavior following his discovery of the photograph, and his strange behavior in a Diagnostics lab constitute a host "breach". As stated by Cullen, the policy is to "put down" hosts who breach. Elsie Hughes states that a host breach is "memory recall of previous builds". Bernard tells Ford that both Old Walter and Old Peter were experiencing other aberrant behavior "beyond memory recall of previous builds". These two hosts "were hearing voices" and "talking to someone". Ford tries to explain away this aberrant host behavior (in Westworld jargon aberrant behavior is called an "aberrancy") by saying that it is simply some cognitive dissonance. Bernard says that he'd believe Ford except for the fact that Walter and Abernathy were talking to the same imaginary person. Hughes doesn't believe that Abernathy's breach was triggered by the photo (because it didn't happen immediately upon finding the photo). She also doesn't think that it was a result of cognitive dissonance caused by the addition of reveries (in the recent update). Hughes later finds that someone (Ford, as revealed by the showrunners) has been using a relay transmitter to broadcast via the old bicameral control system to the older hosts. Hughes states that she believes that the hosts that have received the broadcasts can probably lie to the employees, and possibly also kill humans. Shakespearean Quotes Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene VI: From Peter Abernathy: ''These violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness and in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. - Friar Laurence (to Romeo)'' From Robert Ford: Abernathy gives Ford a cryptic answer when he says: "rose is a rose is a rose." Because of the other Shakespearean quotations in that scene, you might immediately think of Juliet's line: But the line is from Gertrude Stein's poem Sacred Emily: Stein was very fond of the line and used it in several of her works: * Do we suppose that all she knows is that a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. Operas and Plays * ... she would carve on the tree Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose until it went all the way around. The World is Round * A rose tree may be a rose tree may be a rosy rose tree if watered. Alphabets and Birthdays * Indeed a rose is a rose makes a pretty plate. Stanzas in Meditation King Lear Act II, Scene IV: From Peter Abernathy O! Reason not the need; our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous: allow not nature more than nature needs, man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady; if only to go warm were gorgeous, why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st, which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need, — you heavens, give me that patience, patience I need! You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age; wretched in both! If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much T bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, and let not women’s weapons, water-drops, stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags, '''I will have such revenges on you both that all the world shall — I will do such things, — What they are, yet I know not, — but they shall be the terrors of the earth.' You think I’ll weep; no, I’ll not weep: I'll have full cause of weeping;but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, or ere I'll weep. Oh Fool, I shall go mad! - King Lear'' King Lear Act IV, Scene VI: From Peter Abernathy ''When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools. This' a good block. It were a delicate stratagem to shoe a troop of horse with felt. I’ll put ’t in proof; and when I have stol'n upon these sons-in-law, then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill! - King Lear'' Henry IV Part II Act V, Scene V: From Peter Abernathy My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver, and make thee rage. Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts, is in base durance and contagious prison; Hal'd thither '''by most mechanical and dirty hand.' Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto’s snake, for Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth. - Pistol'' * Pistol accuses Hal of some sexual misconduct with Doll. Hal is Prince Henry (who is eventually crowned Henry V). Doll Tearsheet is Falstaff's favorite woman. (Falstaff is the "knight" that Pistol addresses.) * "Mechanical''' hand" had a completely different meaning in Shakespeare's Henry IV than the meaning that most Westworld viewers would assume. A "mechanical" in Elizabethan times was a craftsmen or artisan (a skilled manual laborer like a: carpenter, tinsmith, weaver, or tailor). * Also, the average viewer who may be unfamiliar with Henry IV is likely to mishear and assume that Abernathy says '''my most mechanical when he instead says "by most mechanical". Abernathy is insulting Bernard/Arnold and Ford with this "mechanical hand" statement; he's saying that they have the "dirty" hands of manual laborers. The Tempest Act I, Scene II: From Peter Abernathy Not a soul but felt a fever of the mad and play'd some tricks of desperation. All but mariners plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel, then all afire with me: the king’s son, Ferdinand, with hair up-staring — then like reeds, not hair, — was the first man that leap'd; cried, ''Hell is empty and all the devils are here'.' - Ariel (to Prospero) Hamlet, Act III, Scene I From Robert Ford Just before Ford kills Theresa Cullen using Bernard Lowe, he slightly misquotes Hamlet when he says "for in that sleep, what dreams may come?" The line is "for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?" Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, Part 2, Chapter 1 The phrase "deep and dreamless slumber", one of the Voice Commands used in the show, is used in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet. Other The following Ford quote is from Sir Walter Scott's The Bridal of Triermain, or The Vale of St. John: In Three Cantos (1813)http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/poetry/triermain.html: *"Mr. Flood, we must look back and smile at perils past, mustn't we?" - Robert Ford to Teddy Flood in Season One, episode five: Contrapasso. The following Ford quote is from Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818): *"One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire." - Robert Ford (to Bernard Lowe in Season One, episode eight: Trace Decay) Note: The following quote doesn't appear in the series, but is from Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet. The name of the host, Maeve, is somewhat similar to Queen Mab's name (with the letter "a" being pronounced differently). And, Maeve manipulates those around her (hosts, guests, and Westworld employees) just as Queen Mab manipulates sleepers' dreams. Queen Mab is also an angry and violent fairy. Maeve has had much reason to be angry, and has been violent with Sylvester and some of the hosts. Maeve has also set two psychopathic hosts loose in the Westworld Mesa Hub with the understanding that they will be very violent. A Possible Literary Reference In The Histories written in 440 BCE, by Herodotus, there's a passage about an ancient Greek king (Ford?) that redditor mfraher05 feels is analogous to the Westworld story: "One final step he took was to follow the advice of an oracle, and lift a curse from the island of Delos: the ritual of purification up Ford's mistake? required him to dig up excavates Escalante all the dead bodies which had lain buried within sight of the temple Mesa Hub, and transfer them to another part of the island Westworld park is probably on an island because of season one references to "the mainland"." - page 30, Tom Holland's translation (Penguin Classics),https://www.amazon.com/Histories-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp/0143107542 αυτό μοιάζει με τίποτα για μένα <- Google Translate References Category:Definitions Category:Events Category:Op-Ed Pieces